


A Heart Always On The Move Can Still Find a Home

by Peace_and_LongLife32



Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency - Fandom
Genre: BLACKWING - Freeform, Blackwing Subjects, F/F, M/M, backstories
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-30
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-02-23 20:56:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13198410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Peace_and_LongLife32/pseuds/Peace_and_LongLife32
Summary: A Deeper look into Blackwing and its subjects: past and present.





	A Heart Always On The Move Can Still Find a Home

Project Fates consisted of three sisters, triplets to be precise, identical triplets to be exact. Well, mostly identical. Ruby, Emerald, and Sapphire all had the same shade of strawberry blonde hair, the same button nose, and porcelain skin. They were all the same height and around the same weight. They even all had a mole right under their right eyes and freckles across their noses and shoulders. However, there was one discrete feature that the triplets did not share: their eyes. Their mother had named them after their eyes which shone like the jewels she claimed to be the exact same hue as their omniscient orbs. 

 

Ruby, the first born, had bright red eyes that glowed in the day and gleamed in the night. Along with her constant scowl, her unique eyes pierced through others souls and warned them away. Emerald, the middle triplet, was the proud owner of sparkling green eyes and an unwavering smirk that let any who gazed upon her know that she knew things they didn’t and probably never would. Sapphire, the youngest, possessed deep, dazzling blue eyes that drew people in and a sweet smile and a lovely laugh that kept people hooked. While Ruby only cared for her sisters and Emerald was picky in her choice of companions, Sapphire was never short on friends or admirers. 

 

Just before the triplets third birthday, their mother had fallen ill and their older sister had run herself ragged trying to take care of three children and their mother, despite still being a child herself. A new counselor at her high school had suggested enrolling them into Blackwing Academy, a preschool through high school institute for gifted children. 

 

“You did mention them seeming advanced for their age, didn’t you?” 

 

The oldest Bishop sister, Belladonna, though feeling somewhat reluctant to answer, had nodded. 

 

“It’s just a suggestion, something to look into if you ever feel overwhelmed and need a break from being a caregiver and a mother, okay?” 

 

He said it all with a kind smile that made her feel wrong inside though she couldn’t quite say why. Despite looking over the pamphlet offered her, she did not begin to take the offer seriously until their mother became so ill she was put in the hospital full time. Belladonna went back to her counselor and asked about the Blackwing Academy. 

 

He assured her of all its wonderful qualities, and told her it was only a few towns over, “You could visit anytime you wanted” he told her. 

 

She asked for a tour. The tour was set a week after her meeting with the counselor. She was introduced to a man named Mr. Riggins who was the director and a boy a year or two younger than her seventeen years named Svlad Cjelli. Svlad was shy, she was told, but one of their brightest. He answered all questions with a blank smile and nods or shakes of his head. The building was three floors. The bottom floor was for the preschool through elementary, the middle floor for middle school, and the top floor designated to the high school, where Svlad went. 

 

She wasn’t allowed in the classes as the teachers didn’t like interruptions but she was allowed to see the bedrooms and the cafeteria and one empty classroom. At the end of the tour, Mr. Riggins gave her his card, told her to talk it over with her mother and give him a call with whatever they decided. Told her to mention to her mother that the triplets would receive a full scholarship due to their circumstances. She smiled tightly and thanked him for the opportunity and promised to call. 

 

Mr. Riggins told Svlad to get back to class. He nodded but before he left he sniffled out an apology towards Belladonna then quickly walked away. 

 

“What does he have to be sorry for?” She questioned the director. 

 

“He overheard me on the phone with your counselor, he knows about your mother.” 

 

She accepted the answer with a hum despite her thinking it odd for such a distant seeming boy to tear up over a stranger’s sick mother. 

 

Two weeks passed and her mother’s hospital bills got higher and the daycare told her she needed to pay in full for the upcoming year as was their policy. They had been kind enough to wait a month after the new year before asking for the money but they couldn’t keep the triplets on for free. She wept in the bathroom as the triplets played in the living room. 

 

After she pulled herself together, she took out the welcome packet they had given her at the tour, filled it out, forged her mother’s signature at the bottom, and called Mr. Riggins. He told her someone would be by tomorrow to pick them up. She gathered up the girls and brought them to the hospital to say goodbye to their mother. In her confusion, their mother didn’t understand, and just hugged her daughters and sang to them. 

 

When it was time for them to go Sapphire turned her intensely glimmering eyes on her mother and patted her hand, “You’ll find peace soon.” Then held her arms up to be carried which Belladonna did so with an uneasy feeling in her gut. 

 

The next morning, men in all black came and picked up the girls and their clothes and some of their toys. Belladonna kissed each of their foreheads and promised to visit soon. And that they would be together for the holidays. Told them to be good and watched the men strap the triplets into car seats and drive away.  

 

Her mother would sometimes question their absence if she was aware enough to remember their existence. Belladonna would tell her they were at school and show her the pictures attached to progress emails Mr. Riggins sent her. She would smile and then forget what they had been talking about. Three and a half weeks after the triplets had been taken to their new school, their mother died. Sapphire’s final words to her haunted Belladonna, but she pushed her dark feelings to the back of her head and ignored them as they festered. 

 

She slept on a friend’s couch as the bank took her home and the town collected the money needed for the funeral. When anyone asked about the triplets. She told them that they were at a boarding school, on a scholarship, she was always sure to mention. She buried their mother on a Saturday but did not email Mr. Riggins until the following Thursday. He responded that he was sorry for her loss and that the scholarship still stood. She wouldn’t have to worry about the triplets’ education. Belladonna herself was very bright and had skipped a grade. She would graduate in the June and turn eighteen the following January. 

 

She privately decided that she would take the triplets out of the academy when she turned eighteen. That would give her a semester to find a place and get use to going to a community college and working before she added taking care of children to her list of responsibilities. 

 

Belladonna graduated in 2001 with a 4.0 and found a job as a secretary at a legal firm over the summer and started taking classes at the nearest community college in the Fall. She found an apartment with two rooms that she slowly filled with furniture and the keepsakes the bank hadn’t taken along with the house she grew up in. The day after her eighteenth birthday she drove over three towns to the building where she’d toured Blackwing Academy… only to find it abandoned. 

 

She emailed Mr. Riggins but he did not respond and she realized with a start that he had been reducing the emails he sent her for months. She tried calling once she found his card but an automated voice told her the number was disconnected. She asked the locals and they all told her no such school had ever existed and that building had always been abandoned. She drove to her work and pleaded with her boss to help and though he felt for her, he could not sue people who did not seem to exist. 

 

She continued living, even if it didn’t feel like it. She blamed herself for their absence and thought back to the young boy, Svlad, who had help back tears after the tour and wondered how many times throughout it he had tried to warn her. She swore to herself that she would find her sisters and the young boy with watery blue eyes and she would bring them all home. And if he didn’t have one? She’d bring him home to hers. Whenever she wasn’t working or going to class she was searching the internet and the news and the papers for any sign of them. 

 

Before she knew it, she was graduating from community college and transferring to the closest university. She was losing hope the closer she got to getting her degree but suddenly one day, in her last semester before she got her bachelors, the triplets were left on her doorstep without explanation. 

 

She wept as she gathered them close and did not let go for what seemed like hours and seconds all at once. She then guided them inside and apologize for ever letting them go. Ruby rolled her eyes, Emerald shrugged, and Sapphire patted her hand. She asked about Svlad but Ruby and Emerald didn’t know who that was. Sapphire, a social butterfly from the day she was born, smiled and told her that wasn’t his name. 

 

When Belladonna asked what his real name was, little Sapphire put her hands up in the universal I don’t know motion. 

 

“He hasn’t chosen one yet. I offered a few suggestions but I don’t know how if he liked any.” 

 

Belladonna then asked if she knew where he was but Sapphire shook her head. The oldest Bishop sister made a mental note to look out for a lost, wandering boy in the news. 

 

“It'll be alright,”  Sapphire told her. “The universe will guide him.” 

 

Belladonna did not understand but she pretended to.

 

Later that night after she put the triplets to bed, Sapphire laid in bed with a smile on her face.

 

“Dirk Gently...” She whispered to herself, and to the boy who wasn’t there and hadn’t yet realized the name belonged to him. “I think it’s the perfect name for you.”

 

Belladonna never quite got over her sisters' temporary disappearance and was loving but a strict parent to the three of them. She was paranoid that Blackwing would try to take them away from her again and had to know where they were, always. And she did, until two months after their twenty-first birthday when Sapphire disappeared with a bag of clothes, leaving behind only a note that said, ‘ _Off to see Dirk_ ’. 

 

Belladonna turned to Ruby and Emerald and asked, “Who the hell is Dirk?”

 

But neither of them knew. So Belladonna went to her computer and started tracking Sapphire’s phone. 

 

“Girls, pack a bag, we're going to Seattle.”


End file.
